Nike. A name known across the world for their sports apparel and shoes. I personally love Nike’s products and probably wear the Nike swoosh at some point everyday. The question is where did this empire come from and how did it become so prominent? The answer lies behind the founders of the company, Phil Knight and his old track coach Bill Bowerman. Knight had the dream for the company and Bowerman was fascinated with how running shoes were made. To say the least, the two made a perfect pair.
Phil Knight’s Dream
As a track runner at the University of Oregon, Knight spent a lot of time in running shoes. He noticed that the popular shoes of the time, Adidas and Puma, were both being made in Germany, but Knight believed that they could be made cheaper in Japan. With this crazy idea in his head, Knight decided to go to Japan and make a deal with a Japanese shoe company, Onitsuka Tiger. As Knight was making this business deal with the owner of Onitsuka, he made up a name of his distributing company and with that Blue Ribbon Sports was born. Once Phil got his first shipment of shoes he began selling them out of the truck of his car at different track meets. While Knight was selling the shoes, he knew he could do more.
Knight’s Partnership with Bowerman
In 1964, Phil Knight went to his former Track coach Bill Bowerman, and decided to invest in Blue Ribbon Sports. Both put down $500 towards their first order, which they received in April of the same year and was sold out by July. A lot of their success can be attributed to Bowermans connections in the running world, as he was one of the most famous coaches at the
time. The two were doing great with their distributing company, but they weren’t receiving shipments fast enough to keep up with buyers, so they knew something had to change.
The Start of Nike
Bowerman strongly believed that the weight and material of running shoes made a huge difference for runners, so he spent a lot of time tinkering with the design of the Onitsukas they received. Knowing that their contract with Onitsuka would be up in 1971, Knight and Bowerman decided to start building their own Brand. They started with a name and a logo and just like that, Nike and Swoosh were born.
Now that they had their own brand, they just needed their own shoes. Thankfully Bowerman had been sending designs to Onitsuka and as soon as their contract was up, the partnership was free to make those shoes on their own. One of Bowerman’s most famous designs was created using his wife’s waffle iron. The metal spikes that had previously been worn were tearing up the new track so Bowerman was attempting to create spikes that would be softer on the track. He used the waffle iron to create squares along the bottom of the shoe and used urethane to make the first pair of waffle iron shoes and ruin his wife’s waffle iron at the same time.
After establishing Nike, Knight and Bowerman had nothing but success! By 1989 Nike was the largest sportswear company in America, thanks to different campaigns and signing great athletes.
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